Information associated with a phone call is often collected by agent's using a computer terminal coupled to a suitable application program. In commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,805,209, issued on Feb. 14, 1989, William T. Baker, Jr. et al. teach a host computer for providing real time coordination of caller data with caller phone connections managed by a digital switch, or Computerized Branch Exchange (CBX). An agent transferring a caller to another agent has the caller information terminal screen transferred along with the caller.
However, some call processing situations controlled by a CBX result in a temporary suspension of a phone call. Examples include CBX capabilities such as a Camp-on Callback or a Callback Request that is communicated to the associated host processor, for example a message to be called back at some future, mutually agreed upon time.
Such capabilities, where a phone conversation is suspended and subsequently continued at possibly some indeterminate time in the future, present a more complex phone processing situation than that of a normal call that continues substantially uninterrupted to completion. One problem is created in that only a portion of the information required of the caller may have been gathered before the suspension in the phone call. For example, a caller may have provided certain account related information in preparation to being connected to a call processing resource such as an agent. If, however, all agents are busy the caller may elect not to remain on hold but may elect instead to be called back to complete the transaction.
For obvious reasons an unsatisfactory solution to this problem is to require the caller to provide for a second time the already provided information.
It is thus an object of the invention to provide method and apparatus to manage and save information collected from a caller prior to a suspension of a telephone call for a later association of the saved information with a subsequent continuation of the call.
It is another object of the invention to provide, for use in a Call Management Control System (CMCS) including a CBX for managing a plurality of phones and a Host processor for managing a plurality of display terminals, method and apparatus to manage and save information collected from a caller prior to a suspension of a telephone call for a later association of the saved information with a subsequent continuation of the call.